Vermont Republicans Seem to be Just Fine with a Mass Unsheltering

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The House Human Services Committee tried its best to devise a solution for our looming, self-induced homelessness crisis. The committee consulted with Scott administration officials to put together a plan that would extend the motel voucher program through June 30 with some major changes. Eligibility would be expanded to include those in the General Assistance program plus the “adverse weather” program that kicks in when temperatures get low, but it would set a questionably realistic $75 per night cap on motel reimbursements. (Motels are currently getting an average of $132 per night.) I don’t think much of the plan, but it was an honest effort to reach consensus and keep people sheltered at least through June 30.

But now the Republicans are saying “No, thanks. We prefer the mass unsheltering.”

Human Services’ plan went to the House Appropriations Committee on Friday. At the end of the day, the committee took a straw poll in its revised version of the FY2024 Budget Adjustment Act, which included the Human Services plan. The informal, nonbinding vote was 12-0.

Fast forward to Monday afternoon, when Approps took its actual vote on the Act. And whaddyaknow, the committee’s four Republicans changed their votes. The BAA still passed by an 8-4 margin, but the Republican switcheroo meant the Act passed on a party line vote with no GOP support. And according to a report by Vermont Public, administration officials are throwing cold water on the Human Services plan.

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Welp, We’ve Got Another “Fix” for the Motel Voucher Program

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And good Lord, I hope it works, but I’m not optimistic.

Last week, while the Statehouse press corps was doing God knows what, state lawmakers and Scott administration officials were hashing out another baling-wire-and-duct-tape extension of the General Assistance emergency housing program, which is scheduled to expire on April 1. The scheme was devised in the House Human Services Committee downloadable here) and forwarded on Friday to the House Appropriations Committee as a recommended amendment to the FY2024 Budget Adjustment Act. On Monday, Approps voted 8-4 along party lines to approve the amended BAA, including the emergency housing plan. It will go before the full House later this week.

Reminder: Hundreds of Vermonters are due to lose their vouchers on March 15 when the “adverse weather” program shuts down for the season. Over a thousand more are due to be unhoused on April 1 when the GA voucher program will expire.

The Human Services amendment, now approved by Appropriations, would roll all recipients into a single class and mandate that they all be housed, one way or another, through the end of the fiscal year on June 30. (The program’s future after that will be decided in the FY2025 budget.)

Sounds like great news. Human Services deserves credit for working very hard to try to avoid a mass unsheltering event. But the devil is in the details. And I’ll be pleasantly surprised if this thing actually works.

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Phil Scott Sacrifices a Pinch of His Credibility at the Tomb of Republicanism

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So, our putatively moderate governor went and endorsed the very conservative Nikki Haley for president.

Well, kinda, but not really.

VTDigger reported it as an endorsement; Seven Days cast it as a rebuke of Donald Trump. I have to say Seven Days got it right here. He didn’t say he’d vote for Haley. All he said was that New Hampshire primary voters should choose Haley as the only viable alternative to Trump, in hopes that the November election would offer two candidates “with character and integrity, who respect the rule of law, the rights of all people, and the Constitution.”

That’s a depressingly low bar, but Trump’s dominance of the Republican Party has left Scott in the position of endorsing an ardent anti-choicer, an advocate of building the border wall, cutting taxes for the rich, increasing the age for receiving Social Security, and imposing something stronger than Ron DeSantis’ “don’t say gay” bill, among other things. Not to mention that whole playing footsie with the cause of the Civil War thing.

In short, Haley may be more presentable and less aggressively anti-democratic than Trump, but policy-wise there’s not much distance between her and her former boss. She’s no Phil Scott, that’s for sure.

But Scott, who clings to his partisan identity like a toddler with its favorite plushie, desperately wants the Republican Party to offer something, anything, of value to the American electorate.

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Phil Scott Loses His Binky

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For months and months, Gov. Phil Scott has been setting the stage for a Big Austerity Year where he could issue a rousing call to Live Within Our Means Like a Family Around the Kitchen Table, and slam the Democratic Legislature as mouth-foamin’ tax-and-spenders. After all, the federal Covid relief money has been spent, so the state will have to rely more heavily on its own coffers. And as the federal tide recedes, the knock-on effect will be a slowdown in Vermont’s economy. Of course. It all made perfect sense.

And then state economists Jeffrey Carr and Tom Kavet came along yesterday and pissed in the punchbowl. Take it away, VTDigger:

Despite last year’s hand-wringing over an anticipated downturn of Vermont’s economy, one year later, state economists on Thursday were notably optimistic about where the state’s finances stand.

Vermont’s favorite stats ‘n charts duo delivered the surprising good news to the Emergency Board, which consists of the governor and the four legislative “money committee” chairs. The Carr and Kavet economic forecast (downloadable here) will provide the basis for budget deliberations for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

And Scott just lost a fair bit of leverage in those deliberations. I’m sure that as a person, he’s glad to see Vermont doing so well. But c’mon, despite his protestations to the contrary, Phil Scott is a politician. He’s been in politics for more than 20 years. This, speaking purely in political terms, is a setback for his planned austerity offensive.

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Representation or Tokenism? We Shall Soon Find Out

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Today is, for those who celebrate, Homelessness Awareness Day at the Statehouse. Among the scheduled festivities: A joint hearing of the House General/Housing and House Human Services Committees, with a roster of witnesses that included not one, not two, but three people with what the agenda terms the “lived experience” of being unhoused. (One of the three, Bryan Plant, is seen above after he testified before a legislative hearing last fall.)

With these kinds of events, the proof is in the pudding. It’s what happens after The Special Day that counts. If this is an opportunity to get lawmakers in their feelings by briefly opening the door to Real People, then it’s worthless. If they actually listen to the testimony and do something about it, then it’s all good.

And we’re gonna find out in a hurry, as House Human Services is about to issue its memo to House Appropriations about what to do with emergency housing in the rest of the fiscal year. Human Services was supposed to release its memo last week. It did not. On Tuesday, it approved a memo that excluded emergency housing from its consideration of the Agency of Human Services’ budget request for the remainder of FY24. As of this moment, we’re still waiting to see what the committee will do about housing.

They seem intent on extending the motel voucher program through June instead of approving the Scott administration’s shambolic request for $4 million to provide shelter for a fraction of those currently getting vouchers. But given the repeated delays, I’m guessing they’re having trouble putting together a solid plan and providing the necessary funding. If they fall short, today’s testimony will unfortunately fall into the “tokenism” category.

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Blowin’ Smoke at the Statehouse

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The tailored-suit crowd is gracing us all with their (virtual) presence under the Golden Dome this week. Not one, not two, but three astroturf lobbyists have weighed in with specious arguments against S.18, a bill to ban flavored tobacco products and e-liquids that passed the Senate last year and now awaits action in the House Human Services Committee.

I have to give them credit for creative thinking. It’s long past the day when they could come right out and advocate for products that are proven harmful to people’s health. Instead, they argue that S.18 would lead to organized crime and poorer mental health, and actually promote tobacco consumption. It’s a feat of logical acrobatics worthy of Cirque du Soleil. One has to hope that our lawmakers are smart enough to see through the smoke.

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Well, This Is Just What the City of Barre Didn’t Need

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Thanks to heavy damages suffered in July’s flooding, the city of Barre’s finances are completely up in the air. How much so? City Council has agreed to postpone Town Meeting Day elections until May because, per the Times Argus, “they didn’t have enough good information to comfortably adopt a budget to present to voters on the first Tuesday in March.”

Ouch. Fair to say that the last thing the city needs right now is another piece of big, bad, expensive news.

And here it is! The Barre City Wastewater Treatment Facility and its management have been found to be grossly inadequate. An agreement with the state lists 18 violations in 2020 and 2021 that depict the plant as pretty much a complete disaster. It’s officially called an “Assurance of Discontinuance,” meaning the city promises to cut it the hell out. The full agreement, signed last week by Superior Court Judge Thomas Walsh, can be downloaded here.

You might be thinking that many of Vermont’s municipal wastewater systems are trash, so what makes Barre stand out in that crowd? Well, let me tell you.

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I Understand the Call Letters “WGOP” Might Be Available

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Welp, the other shoe has dropped. Two months after the death of NASCAR legend and central Vermont radio mogul Ken Squier, the stations of Radio Vermont have been sold. Depending on which source you trust, the new owner is failed Republican candidate (and very briefly head of the Ethan Allen Institute) Myers Mermel (Radio Vermont press release) or Mermel and failed Republican candidate and travel mogul Scott Milne (VTDigger). The press release, posted at the Vermont Daily Chronicle, lists Milne as “an investor” and “key advisor,” while Digger bills him as a full partner. Either way, the two men are deeply conservative. Milne somehow got a reputation as a moderate, but he’s a lot less moderate than Phil Scott.

The crown jewel in the Radio Vermont firmament is WDEV, a throwback of a locally-owned, community-oriented station with a mixed format of news, talk, music and sports. The station bills itself as “a forum for all voices to be heard,” although in recent years the loudest voices have come from the right. I expect that trend will only accelerate under its new Republican ownership.

Coincidentally, the call letters “WGOP” are probably available for pocket change. The letters are currently assigned to a tiny AM station in Pocomoke City, Maryland, whose building was destroyed by fire in August 2022. It’s been off the air since then.

I’m a bit sad that the Squier family has exited the scene after owning WDEV since its founding in 1931. I’d be more dismayed by the partisan lean of the new owner/s, except that the station — and all of terrestrial radio — is a mere shadow of its former self.

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Kumbaya for We, But Not for Thee

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Gov. Phil Scott held a momentous press conference today/Wednesday, in which he and a whole bunch of lawmakers unveiled major legislation aimed at tackling Vermont’s housing crisis. (Nobody used the fabled term “omnibus,” but it would have been appropriate.)

It was inspiring, it really was. Scott shared the stage with Democrats and Progressives as well as Republicans, to launch an initiative that’s the end product of what had to be really hard and earnest tripartisan negotiations. It’s the kind of thing that Scott has managed to pull off on occasion when truly engaged. It’s the kind of thing that has earned him his (overblown) reputation for being less interested in politics than in Getting Stuff Done, a reputation that flies in the face of his all-time record for gubernatorial vetoes. Still, this time he rose above partisanship to put this bill together.

And given the truly “all hands on deck” nature of the unveiling, I expect they’re going to pull it off. Which would be remarkable, and a real accomplishment.

(Before I continue, I must explain the illustration at the top of the page. The event featured a whole lot of people sharing the stage with the governor. After the big reveal, Scott asked reporters to stick to the subject at first and hold other questions for later. After the housing questions were exhausted, Scott allowed the assembled guests to depart. Apparently some technician back at the office mistook the ensuing hubbub for the end of the presser, because the feed was cut off at that point. The rest of the Q&A was unavailable on either ORCA Media or WCAX. Oopsie!)

So here’s the place where I point out the turd in the punchbowl.

The event was in stark contrast to the situation with emergency housing for Vermont’s homeless, where the administration is sticking to an inhumane approach that will leave more than a thousand Vermonters, many of them disabled, elderly, or children, without shelter come April 1.

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On Homelessness, a Day Full of Questions and Precious Few Answers

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Tuesday was the Housing Policy Dog and Pony Show at the Statehouse. Housing-related officials from the Scott administration made the rounds of three House committees, talking about housing policy with an emphasis on helping the homeless. The big takeaway: Man, are we ever screwed.

The lead witness slash sacrificial lamb was Chris Winters, former deputy Secretary of State and former Democratic candidate for SoS, who now occupies the hottest seat in Montpelier — the commissionership of the Department of Children and Families, home base for the moral and administrative failure that is Gov. Phil Scott’s policy for dealing with homelessness. (Winters is pictured above with one of his deputies, Interim DCF Business Office Director Shawn Benham, speaking to the House Appropriations Committee.)

There were, as my headline indicates, a whole lot of hard questions and precious few clear answers. But the biggest and least-answered question of them all: How in Hell did we get to this place, where Winters and his team are hastily cobbling together a temporary shelter program that will, at best, house a fraction of those about to be unhoused when the state’s motel voucher program expires on April 1?

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